Spy Vs. Spy

Roberts and Owen go head to head and heart to heart in 'Duplicity' *** ( 3 STARS)

Nothing is as it seems" in the Julia Roberts-Clive Owen corporate-espionage comedy-drama Duplicity. Take that as a blanket spoiler-alert. The strategy of the movie is to keep viewers alternately engaged and bemused, knowing they'll be tricked while feeling pleasurably gamed.

Whipping audiences through multiple intrigues across the globe, Duplicity is like Mr. and Mrs. Smith with an intricate, real story and juicy cloak and dagger instead of hyperbolic gunplay. It's an odd duck: a labor-intensive piece of light entertainment. The film exposes its heavy narrative machinery as it hurtles breathlessly along, yet it succeeds because of the dexterity of Tony Gilroy, the writer-director, and the star power of Owen and Roberts.

Gilroy asks the basic question, "How can you grow to trust the person you want and need to trust most - the one you love?" Then he hands it over to stars portraying spies who are experts at deception. No one is better than Owen at displaying supple humor and emotion without blowing his hard-guy cover. His performance should delight the millions who thought he should have been the new James Bond. Roberts gets to focus her intelligence and ebullience and deliver a new, mature modulation on her trademark energy and her often-humorous combination of gnarliness and glamour. One of her last decent star roles was in Mona Lisa Smile (2003). In Duplicity, she invents a Mona Lisa laugh, chuckle and giggle.

In Gilroy's skillful, witty follow-up to his writing-directing debut, Michael Clayton, he continues to exercise his talent for baiting a narrative and getting viewers to jump to it. The movie goes back and forth in time as it hops between Dubai, Rome, London and New York. Gilroy moves quickly to keep the tension taut on the cutthroat rivalry driving two giant soap-and-cosmetics companies. At the same time, he pulls us into the romance and competition that propel the personal and professional lives of CIA agent Claire Stenwick (Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Owen) throughout the new millennium.

They experience an earthshaking one-night stand at the U.S. Embassy's Fourth of July party in Dubai, when, despite coital bliss, she drugs him and steals confidential material from his briefcase. We next see them in New York, five years later, when both have left their government posts for lucrative private practice. On his first assignment at a Manhattan job, Ray becomes Claire's field agent.